I really believe that, all things considered, I'm blessed to be the way that I am. Yes, I envy those who have never had gender issues, and I wish that I could just be "normal" all the time. But at the same time, it has taught me SO much as a person. I've had to step beyond my comfort zone, learn to have empathy for others if I expect to receive the same empathy in return. And it really has made me a better person: more loving, more caring, more patient and understanding, and more sympathetic.
When I've asked the good Lord "Why? Why do I have to go through this?," though, the answer that I've increasingly been getting was because I had to learn to stand up for myself. All through high school, all through college, I've been a COMPLETE pushover when it comes to standing up for things that I believe in. I just have way too much of that "good girl" mindset in me, the same one that keeps women from asking for promotions and challenging others even when they know that they're wrong... seeking the approval of others over their own. And I've always acted EXACTLY like that. I don't know how to live for myself, because I've always lived to not offend others. Well, now it's time to unlearn that, and finally learn to be my own person instead of needing the approval of others to feel worthy and feel accomplished.
I've also done a few past-life regression sessions, and supposedly in my last life I was a woman named Annie, born in 1926, who was a teenager in the 1940's and a working woman during the 1950's. Supposedly, she spent her entire life having internalized the "perfect family" image, and constantly felt like a complete failure because she never married and never had a family while all of her close friends did, and she ended up working a dead-end job at a department store for her whole life, never having the gumption to do ANYTHING to change the circumstances that she hated so much, and tore herself up over so much. And even though she was quite beautiful, she never learned to love herself. (logic: "if nobody loves me, there must be something wrong with me," self-defeating attitude, blah blah blah.) So in many ways I believe my current situation is a continuation of that. I had this regression session LONG before I finally admitted my transsexualism, and LONG before I entered the working world, (like in my junior year of college when I pretty much couldn't think of anything but class work,) and only now am I realizing all of these connections to my current state of mind and my current situation. It's almost like God is saying to me "well, you never learned to love yourself when you really were a beautiful woman, so now it's time for you to learn to love yourself under the most unimaginable of circumstances. Get going on it."
And I still haven't quite learned this. Ever since I started HRT, I have been FREAKING out about how un-passable my "girl mode" is. And I'm just constantly fighting the battle between "be myself and don't care what anyone says," and "wait until I'm feminine enough to pass so that I don't get any weird stares."
Sometimes you just have to keep repeating things, in different circumstances, until you finally learn the lesson that you were supposed to. I'm still working on it.
